The Future of Arbitration Agreements after the CFPB Study - Podcast
Litigation Practice Group Teleforum
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 instructs the Consumer Financial...
Litigation Practice Group
Deepak Gupta, Andrew J. Pincus
Litigation Practice Group Teleforum
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 instructs the Consumer Financial...
Practice Groups Podcast
In her book, The Story: A Reporter's Journey, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller...
Practice Groups Podcast
During the month of July, the Federalist Society will be celebrating Liberty Month. Our campaign...
Engage Volume 16, Issue 1
On April 22, the Supreme Court decided two consolidated cases construing the Federal Tort Claims...
Stephen Gardner, Kenneth Kiyul Lee
Litigation Practice Group Podcast
There has been a recent surge in consumer class action lawsuits challenging "all natural" labels...
Senior Advisor, Burke Law Group
Anne Idsal Austin is an environmental health and safety attorney. Founder of Austin Legal & Public Affairs. Anne served in the highest ranks of state and federal government, where she shaped environmental and energy policy at the highest levels of government. She provides strategic counseling and policy guidance in the complex arenas of environmental and natural resources law. She handles complex environmental and natural resources litigation. Her experience includes air, water and waste governmental enforcement actions; citizen suits under RCRA, CERCLA, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act; climate change litigation; toxic tort lawsuits involving chemical exposures, dust exposures and industrial accidents and toxic tort claims;.
Anne served as the principal deputy assistant administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air & Radiation (OAR). In this role, she had a significant impact on U.S. clean air policy and regulation. Additionally, she served as the EPA Regional Administrator for Region 6, responsible for the implementation of federal environmental statutes and programs across Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and New Mexico. Before serving in the federal government, Anne was the Chief Clerk and Deputy Land Commissioner for the Texas General Land Office and served as the general counsel for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Prior to joining Burke Law Group and founding Austin Legal & Public Affairs, Anne was environmental partner with an AMLAW100 firm, where she represented regulated clients to position them for success before state and federal regulatory agencies.
General Counsel, Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Zhonette brings a quarter-century of litigation experience to NCLA. After a federal clerkship, she spent many years litigating at large law firms in Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colorado, before beginning public interest litigation in 2018.
Zhonette has litigated in state, federal, and international venues and in matters ranging from pro bono custody issues to multi-district and class action cases for Fortune 100 companies. Zhonette spent the first part of her career focused on high-stakes complex commercial litigation and white-collar defense. Since changing her legal practice to taming the Administrative State, Zhonette has focused on the Administrative Procedure Act, natural resources, takings issues and other constitutional claims.
Zhonette is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, the State of Colorado, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and various federal courts.
Partner, Holtzman Vogel Baran Torchinsky & Josefiak PLLC
Abhishek (Abhi) Kambli is a partner at Holtzman Vogel who represents clients in high-stakes appellate and complex litigation, constitutional challenges, and matters involving state attorneys general and federal agencies. He is one of a handful of lawyers nationally who has both led federal litigation from inside the Department of Justice and multi-state coalition work from a State Attorney General’s office—giving clients a 360-degree perspective on government enforcement, regulatory challenges, and constitutional advocacy.
Prior to joining Holtzman Vogel, Abhi served as Deputy Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, where he acted as lead counsel in high-priority matters for the Trump Administration, oversaw the Department’s civil components on behalf of the Associate Attorney General, advised the White House Counsel’s Office and federal agencies on litigation risk and strategy, and developed the Department’s national affirmative civil litigation strategy.
Earlier, he served as Deputy Attorney General and Division Chief of the Special Litigation and Constitutional Issues Division at the Kansas Attorney General’s Office, where he launched the division and led multi-state coalitions in trial and appellate courts nationwide, including the United States Supreme Court. He began his career as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of Indiana, prosecuting more than 100 federal cases from investigation through appeal.
Abhi is also a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force Judge Advocate General's Corps, having served on active duty and in the reserves since 2013. His military service includes criminal trials as both prosecutor and defense attorney, appellate representation before the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, and representation of a high-profile detainee before the Military Commissions at Guantánamo Bay.
Attorney and Legal Commentator
John Shu is an attorney and legal commentator. His focus areas include constitutional law, securities & corporate law, antitrust law, administrative law, politics, and international affairs. Mr. Shu has lectured and published on a wide variety of issues.
Mr. Shu served President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush. He also served Judge Stanley Sporkin, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was Director of Enforcement at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and General Counsel at the Central Intelligence Agency, and Judge Paul Roney, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who was Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.
Mr. Shu is a member of the National Committee on U.S. - China Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy, and the Foreign Policy Association.
Partner, Shook, Hardy & Bacon, LLP
Phil Goldberg is the office managing partner of Shook in Washington, D.C., and co-chair of the firm’s Public Policy Practice Group. He has more than 25 years of experience advising clients on high stakes and high profile liability-related public policy, public affairs and public relations issues. He counsels businesses and their trade associations on some of the most cutting-edge liability issues of the day.
As part of this work, Phil co-chairs the firm’s National Amicus Practice, which files more than three dozen amicus briefs every year. He has filed amicus briefs for many of the most influential trade and civil justice groups with courts at every level, from the U.S. Supreme Court to the U.S. Courts of Appeals and state appellate courts. He has testified before Congress and state legislatures, has authored leading legal scholarship and is a regular speaker at judicial education conferences. He also is a resource for journalists, podcasters and others who report on and discuss pressing liability issues.
President and Co-Founder, America First Legal Foundation
Gene Hamilton is the President of America First Legal, which he co-founded, and where he was previously the Executive Director, Executive Vice President, and General Counsel. He most recently served as Deputy White House Counsel to President Donald Trump. Earlier in his career, Gene served as Counselor to Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice and as Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security. He also served as General Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee and held several roles at the Department of Homeland Security, including with U.S. Immigration Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Office of the General Counsel. He holds a B.A. from the University of Georgia and a J.D. from Washington and Lee University School of Law.
Executive Director, Alliance For Consumers
O.H. leads Alliance For Consumers, which fights to ensure that consumer protection efforts, class action lawsuits, and attorney general enforcement actions are consistent with the rule of law and benefit everyday consumers, not just class action lawyers and career bureaucrats.
His work with AFC builds off his time with the Arizona Attorney General's Office under Attorney General Mark Brnovich, where he not only defended constitutional questions and served as the State's lead counsel in the U.S. Supreme Court, but also had the privilege of leading Arizona's consumer protection lawsuit against Google over the tracking of consumers' location, and the successful case against Volkswagen over well-publicized diesel-related consumer deception.
O.H. is a 2010 graduate of Harvard Law School. Before joining Attorney General Brnovich in 2016, O.H. practiced at WilmerHale and Ropes & Gray in Boston and clerked for the Hon. J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia.
Counsel, Boyden Gray PLLC
Jim Wedeking is counsel at Boyden Gray PLLC. He has extensive experience with environmental regulations, providing compliance counseling for large industrial and agricultural companies and their related trade associations, drafting comments on proposed environmental rulemakings from a variety of federal agencies, and challenging those rules in court. For over 20 years he has helped companies obtain various permits and other authorizations for constructing major infrastructure projects, including fossil fuel-fired power plants, natural gas pipelines, and offshore wind turbines, as well as defend those permits and authorizations through litigation. Mr. Wedeking frequently writes on federal environmental law topics, including for the Washington Legal Foundation.
He has also counseled clients on several Freedom of Information Act matters, including the protection of confidential business information from disclosure to third parties and how the Supreme Court’s Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media decision increased protections for company information provided to regulatory agencies.
Before joining the firm, Mr. Wedeking was counsel in Sidley Austin’s Washington, D.C. environmental, health, and safety practice group. There, he represented industrial companies in defending against civil and criminal enforcement actions and toxic tort suits.
Mr. Wedeking received a J.D., cum laude, from the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law and a B.A. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland.
Partner, Latham & Watkins LLP
Gregory Garre is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Latham & Watkins and Global Chair of the firm's Supreme Court and Appellate Practice Group. He recently served as the 44th Solicitor General of the United States. As Solicitor General, he was the federal government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court and was responsible for overseeing the government's litigation in the federal appellate courts. Prior to his nomination by the President and unanimous confirmation as Solicitor General by the Senate, he served as Principal Deputy Solicitor General from 2005 to 2008, and then as Acting Solicitor General. In addition, he served as an Assistant to the Solicitor General from 2000 to 2004. He is the only person to have held all of those positions within the Office of the Solicitor General.
Mr. Garre has argued 29 cases before the Supreme Court, including two cases during the current term, and has served as counsel of record in hundreds of cases before the Court. During the past term, he won each of the cases he argued as Solicitor General, including the landmark case of Ashcroft v. Iqbal, which clarified the gateway requirements for civil litigation in the federal courts, as well as FCC v. Fox Television Stations, and Winter v. NRDC. He has also argued and briefed cases involving a wide array of other nationally important matters, including in the areas of administrative law, alien tort statute, antitrust, business and employment law, education, environmental law, First Amendment, intellectual property, international law, media and telecommunications, separation of powers and voting rights.
Mr. Garre has also successfully argued numerous cases before the federal courts of appeals, including some of the most significant cases heard by the appellate courts in recent years. And, as Acting Solicitor General, he successfully argued on behalf of the government in the first adversarial appeal heard by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in its 30-year history.
Mr. Garre has received numerous awards for his public service, including the Attorney General's Medallion for his service as Solicitor General and the Navy's Distinguished Public Service Award-the Navy's highest civilian honor-for his successful argument in Winter v. NRDC, which secured a path-marking Supreme Court ruling overturning an order that restrained critically important naval exercises. He has also received the Attorney General's Distinguished Service Award, the Attorney General's Award for Excellence in Furthering Interests of US National Security, and additional honors from the Department of Justice for his work on nationally important litigation matters.
In November 2009, Mr. Garre was named to Washingtonian Magazine's list of top Supreme Court lawyers. In 2006, he was named to The American Lawyer's "Fab 50" list of top litigators under the age of 45 expected to be "leading the field for years to come." And in 2005, he was named to Chambers USA's list of leading appellate litigators in Washington, D.C.
Mr. Garre received his JD degree with high honors from the George Washington University Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the law review and was selected to Order of the Coif, and his BA degree cum laude from Dartmouth College, where he was a Rufus Choate Scholar. Following his graduation from law school, he served as a law clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and to Judge Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Mr. Garre is a member of the advisory board of the Georgetown University Law School Supreme Court Institute and of the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court. He has taught constitutional law and Supreme Court practice for many years at the George Washington University Law School. He has testified before Congress and speaks frequently on issues related to the Supreme Court and appellate practice.
Litigation Associate, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
Jill Jacobson is an Appeals and Strategic Counseling and Complex Commercial Litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP. She is a former law clerk to Judge Aileen M. Cannon on the District Court for the Southern District of Florida and a future law clerk to Judge Elizabeth L. Branch on the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Jill a fellow emeritus at the Independent Women's Law Center and a Senior Contributor at Young Voices. She has also been a Litigation Contractor at the Institute for Justice. She holds a J.D. from Boston College Law School and a Masters from Northeastern University.
Senior Litigation Counsel, New Civil Liberties Alliance
Peggy Little, Senior Counsel at New Civil Liberties Alliance, a new public interest law firm challenging the administrative state founded in 2017 by Professor Philip Hamburger, has over three decades of experience as a trial and appellate litigator in complex, high-stakes regulatory, mass-tort, class-action, products liability, securities, commercial and civil rights litigation representing individuals and high-profile litigants including Fortune 50 companies, financial institutions, public companies, and universities in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
Peggy is a graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, where she was awarded the Potter Stewart Prize. She was a law clerk to the Hon. Ralph K. Winter on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Prior to starting her own trial and appellate law firm in 1997, where she was appellate consulting counsel to the New Haven firefighters in Ricci v.DeStefano, a landmark 2009 United States Supreme Court decision, Peggy was a partner at Tyler, Cooper & Alcorn in New Haven, Connecticut. From 2004 to early 2018, Peggy directed, part-time, the Federalist Society Pro Bono Center.
Peggy has participated in many national conferences and symposia addressing issues of current importance in constitutional law – specifically state and federal constitutional questions regarding the separation of powers and the first amendment – and regularly speaks, blogs and publishes on the topic of the unconstitutional exercise of governmental power. In May of 2017, she presented her paper, Pirates at the Parchment Gates, to a conference of state and federal judges at the Law and Economics Center at the Antonin Scalia Law School. Her work has been published by law reviews, legal publications, the Federalist Society, the Wall Street Journal, Law and Liberty and the Manhattan Institute.
Recent publications include: How the SEC silences its critics, The SEC should listen to Sen. Cotton, Lucia v. SEC, Opening Salvos in the Opioid Litigation Wars, Straight Dope on the Opioid Crisis
Founding Principal, Gupta Wessler PLLC
Deepak Gupta is the founding principal of Gupta Wessler PLLC. He focuses on Supreme Court, appellate, and complex litigation on a wide range of issues, including constitutional law, class actions, and consumers’ and workers’ rights.
Deepak is “known as a skilled appellate lawyer” (New York Times), “one of the emerging giants of the appellate and the Supreme Court bar,” a “heavy hitter,” and a “principled” and “incredibly talented lawyer” (Law 360). He is described in Chambers and Partners USA as “an excellent lawyer” with a “vibrant appellate practice focused on public interest cases and plaintiff-side representations.” Fastcase recently recognized him as “one of the country’s top litigators,” noting that “what sets him apart” is his legal creativity. The National Law Journal has singled out Deepak’s “calm, comfortable manner that conveys confidence” in oral argument.
Deepak regularly appears in the U.S. Supreme Court and appellate courts nationwide. In the 2016-2017 U.S. Supreme Court term, Deepak’s firm was counsel of record for parties in three merits cases; he was lead counsel in two, prevailing in both. Beyond the Supreme Court, Deepak has handled appeals in every federal circuit and seven state supreme courts. He is frequently sought out by trial lawyers to defend their most consequential victories or resurrect worthy claims on appeal—often after years of hard-fought litigation. He also works with co-counsel to design cases from the ground up—focusing on class actions and administrative and constitutional challenges. In one class action, Deepak represented all of the nation’s federal bankruptcy judges, recovering more than $50 million in back pay for the judges over Congress’s violation of the Constitution’s Judicial Compensation Clause. As the American Lawyer observed, “it’s hard to imagine a higher compliment than being hired to represent federal judges.”
Deepak’s clients have included national nonprofits, state and local governments, members of Congress, retail merchants, tech companies, and classes of consumers and workers harmed by corporate wrongdoing. He currently represents the American Association for Justice (on forced arbitration and civil justice issues), Everytown for Gun Safety (in Second Amendment litigation), and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (in litigation over the Emoluments Clauses).
Before founding the firm in 2012, Deepak served as Senior Counsel for Litigation and Senior Counsel for Enforcement Strategy at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. As the first appellate litigator hired under Elizabeth Warren’s leadership, he launched the Bureau’s amicus program, defended its regulations, and worked with the Solicitor General’s office on Supreme Court matters. For seven years previously, he was an attorney at Public Citizen Litigation Group, where he founded and directed the Consumer Justice Project and was the Alan Morrison Supreme Court Project Fellow. Before that, he worked on voting rights litigation at the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, prisoners’ rights litigation at the ACLU, and religion clause litigation at Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Deepak frequently engages in public advocacy and speaking, has testified multiple times before the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and appears frequently in the national print and broadcast media. He is currently a 2018-2019 Wasserstein Public Interest Fellow at Harvard Law School and has previously taught courses on public interest law and appellate advocacy as an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown and American universities. He served as a law clerk to Judge Lawrence K. Karlton of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California and studied law at Georgetown, Sanskrit at Oxford, and philosophy at Fordham.
Deepak is an elected member of the American Law Institute and sits on the boards of directors of the National Consumer Law Center, The Impact Fund, and the Alliance for Justice, and the advisory boards of the University of California’s Civil Justice Research Initiative, the Biden Institute, and the Institute for Consumer Antitrust Studies.
Partner, Mayer Brown LLP
Andrew Pincus is a partner in Mayer Brown LLP resident in Washington, D.C. His practice focuses on Supreme Court and appellate litigation.
Andy has argued 29 cases in the Supreme Court of the United States, including Lamps Plus, Inc. v. Varela and Frank v. Gaos in the October 2018 Term; as well as his recent victories in Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. (2017); Kindred Nursing Home Centers Limited Partnership v. Clark (2017); and Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins (2016). Law360 ranked Andy’s victory in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion (2011), as the most important Supreme Court class action decision of the last 15 years.
Andy appears regularly before federal and state appellate courts and federal district courts. His practice also includes written and oral advocacy before Congress, other legislative bodies, and regulatory agencies regarding a variety of policy and legal issues.
A former Assistant to the Solicitor General in the United States Department of Justice (1984-1988), Andy co-founded and serves as co-director of the Yale Law School's Supreme Court Advocacy Clinic (2006-present), which provides pro bono representation in 10-15 Supreme Court cases each year.
While serving as General Counsel of the United States Department of Commerce (1997-2000), Andy had principal responsibility for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act. He also participated in formulation of policy concerning privacy, domain name management, taxation of electronic commerce, export controls, international trade, and consumer protection.
Andy is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School, where he was a Notes & Comments Editor of the Columbia Law Review. He served as Law Clerk to the Honorable Harold H. Greene, United States District Court for the District of Columbia (1981-1982).
Adjunct Fellow, Manhattan Institute
Judith Miller is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor. A best-selling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter formerly with the New York Times, she has won numerous awards for her articles and her defense of the First Amendment.
Since 2008, Ms. Miller has been a commentator for Fox News, speaking on terrorism and other national security issues, the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy, and the need to strike a delicate balance between protecting both national security and civil liberties in a post-9/11 world.
Prior to leaving the Times in October, 2005, she spent 85 days in jail to defend a reporter's right to protect confidential sources. That year she received the Society of Professional Journalists' "First Amendment Award" for her defense of an independent press. Since leaving jail, she has been advocating the enactment of a Federal shield law to protect the relationship between reporters and their sources and the public's right to know.
Ms. Miller has written four books and contributed chapters to several others. Her most recent book, "Germs: Biological Weapons and America's Secret War" (Simon & Schuster, 2001), written with two Times colleagues, topped the best seller's list in the wake of 9/11 and the anthrax letter terrorist attacks. Her previous book, "God Has Ninety-Nine Names", (Simon & Schuster, 1996) explores the spread of Islamic extremism in ten Middle Eastern countries, including Israel and Iran. "One, By One, By One" (Simon & Schuster, 1990) is a highly praised account of how people in six nations have distorted the memory of the Holocaust. That same year, she co-authored "Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf" (Times Books), which also topped The Times Best Seller list during the 1991 Gulf war. Her new book, “The Story, A Reporter’s Journey,” is being published by Simon & Schuster this spring.
In 2002, Ms. Miller was part of a small team that won a Pulitzer Prize for "explanatory journalism" for her January, 2001 series on Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. That same year, she won an Emmy for her work on a Nova/New York Times documentary based on articles for her book, "Germs." She was part of the Times team that won the prestigious DuPont award for a series of programs on terrorism for PBS's "Frontline."
Ms. Miller holds a bachelor's degree from Barnard and a master's from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She resides in New York City and Sag Harbor with her husband, Jason Epstein, a publisher and writer.
Visiting Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Dr. Arthur Herman (Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1985) is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestselling How the Scots Invented the Modern World (2001); the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Gandhi and Churchill (2008); To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (nominated for the UK’s Mountbatten Prize); and the highly acclaimed Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, which The Economist magazine picked as one of the Best Books of 2012.
His most recent work, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, was published by Random House in 2013.
Educated at the University of Minnesota and Johns Hopkins University in history and classics, Dr. Herman is a frequent contributor on defense, energy, and technology issues to Commentary magazine, the New York Post, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal. He was also the first non-British citizen to be named to the Scottish Arts Council from 2007 to 2009.
United States Senator, Utah
Elected in 2010 as Utah's 16th Senator, Mike Lee has spent his career defending the basic liberties of Americans and Utahns as a tireless advocate for our founding constitutional principles.
Senator Lee acquired a deep respect for the Constitution early on. His father, Rex Lee, who served as the Solicitor General under President Ronald Reagan, would often discuss varied aspects of judicial and constitutional doctrine around the kitchen table, from Due Process to the uses of Executive Plenary Power. He attended most of his father's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a unique, hands-on experience and understanding of government up close.
Lee graduated from Brigham Young University with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science, and served as BYU's Student Body President in his senior year. He graduated from BYU's Law School in 1997 and went on to serve as law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, and then with future Supreme Court Justice Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Lee spent several years as an attorney with the law firm Sidley & Austin specializing in appellate and Supreme Court litigation, and then served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Salt Lake City arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.
Lee served the state of Utah as Governor Jon Huntsman's General Counsel and was later honored to reunite with Justice Alito, now on the Supreme Court, for a one-year clerkship. He returned to private practice in 2007.
Throughout his career, Lee earned a reputation as an outstanding practitioner of the law based on his sound judgment, abilities in the courtroom, and thorough understanding of the Constitution.
Today, Lee fights to preserve America's proud founding document in the United States Senate. He advocates efforts to support constitutionally limited government, fiscal responsibility, individual liberty, and economic prosperity.
Lee is a member of the Judiciary Committee, and serves as Chairman of the Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee protecting business competition and personal freedom.
He also oversees issues critical to Utah as the Chairman of the Water and Power Subcommittee of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He serves on the Commerce Committee and the Joint Economic Committee, as well.
In the 114th Congress, Lee also began his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Steering Committee, where he works with his Republican colleagues in the Senate to introduce bold and innovative solutions to issues facing the American people.
Lee and his wife Sharon live in Alpine, Utah, with their three children. He is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and served a two-year mission for the Church in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Chancellor Professor, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School of Law
Peltz-Steele received his law degree from Duke University and a bachelor’s in journalism and Spanish from Washington & Lee University. Peltz-Steele has won awards in teaching, research, and public service. He practiced commercial law in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and taught law for more than thirteen years before coming to UMass Law in 2011.
Peltz-Steele is author, co-author, or co-editor of qualitative and quantitative research in law and mass communication in journals and books, of treatises in law and development and access to information, and of textbooks in tort law and freedom of information. He is especially active in international media law and policy, having presented papers on five continents and having published in foreign journals and multinational collaborations. His current research focuses on comparative transparency in the context of development and in the private sector. Peltz-Steele serves in various roles in public service organizations, including the legal education committee of the American Bar Association, International Law Section.
Of Counsel, Stanley Law Group
Stephen Gardner serves of counsel to the Dallas-based Stanley Law Group, a plaintiffs firm. Previously, Mr. Gardner was Director of Litigation for the Washington, DC based advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest 2004-2014); Of Counsel to the National Consumer Law Center (2002-2006); Assistant Dean of Clinical Education at Southern Methodist University School of Law (1994-1995); Visiting Assistant Professor of Law at Southern Methodist University School of Law (1992-1995); Assistant Attorney General in the Consumer Protection Division of the State of Texas (1984-1991); Assistant Attorney General in the Bureau of Consumer Frauds of the State of New York (1982-1984); Students Attorney at the University of Texas (1981-1982); and a staff attorney at the legal aid office in Austin, now part of Texas RioGrande Legal Services (1976-1981). He is a frequent author and speaker on consumer advocacy issues.
Judge, United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
Kenneth Kiyul Lee is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was appointed in June 2019 and is based in San Diego, California.
Prior to his appointment, he was a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block in Los Angeles. Judge Lee previously served as an Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush and as Special Counsel to Senator Arlen Specter, then-chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He started his legal career at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York.
Judge Lee received his J.D. from Harvard Law School, magna cum laude, and his A.B. from Cornell University, summa cum laude. He clerked for Judge Emilio M. Garza of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.